A set of tongs is an indispensable tool used by chefs to tackle a variety of cooking tasks. The hinged arms of the generally metal tongs are configured with jaws that are positioned to engage each other and are parallel to the axis of the hinge or pivot. A typical length for the tongs is about 9 inches. The tongs can be used for grasping, flipping, holding, lifting, and moving a variety of hot or cold foods. For example, they can be used to turn a steak on a hot grill, lift a lobster out of boiling water, or retrieve hot baking pans from an oven.
In a commercial kitchen, where speed and efficiency are of great value, the versatile tongs are constantly in use by a chef. Yet keeping the tongs handy and ready for use presents problems. For instance, a chef may lay his tongs down to use both hands to move a heavy dish to another area of the kitchen, but then must waste valuable time retrieving the tongs. Or a chef may inadvertently pick up tongs forgotten by a nearby chef causing both chefs to loose time and efficiency in the mix up. A tong holder that maintains the tongs in a convenient place upon the chef, yet does not interfere with the work, is needed.
To address this problem, some chef aprons feature a cloth loop-like strap that is attached at or near the waist area of the apron. But it is neither fast nor efficient to hook and unhook the tongs onto the cloth loop. To engage the tongs with the cloth strap, one arm of the tongs must be hooked into the loop and extended onto the back side of the loop, while the second arm remains at the front of the loop. To then use the tongs again, the rearward arm must be disengaged from the flexible cloth loop. Though the procedure is not especially challenging, it is time-consuming and inconvenient in the fast-paced environment of a commercial kitchen. Furthermore, there is no convenient way to sanitize a cloth strip, except by removing the apron and replacing it with a freshly laundered apron.
Sanitation is of prime importance in the commercial kitchen. All tools and anything that they rest upon should be easy to sterilize at the end of a shift or even multiple times during a shift, if necessary.
Further, an ideal tong holder would be economical and easy to manufacture.
Therefore, there is a need for a tong holder that allows a chef to keep a set of tongs in a highly-accessible location on his person, that does not interfere with the chef's work duties, that provides swift, efficient removal and insertion of the tongs, that facilitates fast, effective sanitizing during or after a work shift, and that is economical and easy to manufacture.